Acacia
Acacia is the twelve-year-old daughter of Tabitha and a Yaecudish peasant girl. Appearance and Character Acacia is petite, with freckles, fray long yellow hair, brown doe-eyes and a delicate face. Hansa describes her as being undernourished and terribly innocent looking. Acacia is very shy and bashful, with her style of speaking being laconic. Hansa Wildow finds her cute due to her timid personality. Notable Events Acacia and her family are abducted by Bau-Je and Hansa Wildow amongst others due to being paranoid over the thought of an approaching Communion of the Steed attack, and due to prisoners dying out, they capture Acacia‘s family from one of the surrounding villages in hopes they know information of it. Acacia‘s father is killed during the abduction and her mother is blindfolded while being transported to Hamaharqq’s dungeons. Acacia is placed in one of the dungeon‘s cells and is visited by Hansa Wildow. Her mother Tabitha is taken for questioning and Acacia shrieks at the sight of this. Hansa yells at her to be quiet or she will be forced to watch her being tortured. Tabitha is returned to Acacia‘s cell as Hansa balks at the thought of torturing a girl’s mother. A few days later, Tabitha and Acacia are both raped by Maatavi soldiers. This causes Hansa to come over and apologise, saying that those who did it will be put to death. Tabitha scoffs at this, calling Hansa a broken boy trying to be something he isn’t. Sometime during Hansa’s torturing sessions, the mother and daughter plan an escape. One of the guards overhears this and Tabitha is sent to Hansa for torturing. She is stripped naked and is strapped upon a hobbling wheel, and Hansa gropes her and threatens her that the whole Maatavi will rape her daughter if they try to escape again. Without her knowledge, Hansa only tried to impress upon her the fact she may lose her daughter if they tried again. Despite this, the two are able to dig a hole to the Archives section of the castle when the guards were on dinner break and during the nights. Tabitha, realising her daughter would never escape without a proper distraction, gets one of the guards attention and kills him with his own blade. The plan was for the guards to search the dungeons while the two were actually up in the Archives. However, a guard witnesses the murder and sends Tabitha to an unknown torturer and tortures her to death. The guards lock and barricade the door so they cannot escape again. Unbeknownst to the guards that there was a tunnel reaching the Archives, Acacia crawls up the tunnels and wanders about the halls lost and searching for an exit. Hansa opens the door to Acacia’s cell to see it deserted and covered with a mound of hay, Hansa sees that the tunnel reaches the Archives. Without telling the guards in hopes to resolve the issue amicably, Hansa sets off on his own to find her. However, on the way there he gets progressively more paranoid that she might escape and alert the Khan over the Maatavi’s actions. This causes Hansa to be much more desperate and eventually finds Acacia wandering the exterior section of the Archives. A chase suddenly breaks out and Hansa chases Acacia with a dagger as she begs him to leave her alone. Acacia constantly throws things into his path to slow him down, resulting in the chase lasting an excruciatingly long time and ending up in the sewer system. With no way to slow him down and realising the sewer system will eventually lead to the outside, Hansa attempts to grab Acacia but rips her dress instead. Acacia is now exhausted and fleeing for her life and her pace has become slower. Because of her dress being ripped, she is forced to hug herself to keep the dress up. Catching up on Acacia again, Hansa manages to get a solid grip on her and finally stabs her four times to her death. Acacia falls to the sewer floor and perishes there. This is the catalyst for Hansa‘s crippling guilt and his final reason for heading to the Yaecudish Paw to succumb to amnesia. Quotes ”She looked up at him with summer eyes. Brown, Hansa thought, as her mother's. Her yellow hair dropped fray to her feet, and it masked her delicate face. Hansa met her eyes with his own, and in her, he saw himself. She was so jolly in that steading, now she curled in her gown against her mother whom gazed blades. He knew their fate ever since the bag slipped over the woman’s head... she won’t live next moon... and Hansa didn’t know what to feel.” - Hansa meeting Acacia and Tabitha. “Tabitha is sprawled on the spokes. Each womanly part of her in view for him. Hansa found it funny until he tittered. If she felt that way, she’d need only have said! She wrenched herself in the ropes, and Hansa approached the wheel as a mallet touched his fingers from the table. Tabitha turned to stone at the sight of that. ”Are you too proud to beg for mercy?” Hansa asked, unable to keep his smirk from growing on his cheeks. “Heh.” he pushed his fingers over her teat, and she wriggled. “Mayhaps your daughter would be more complacent.” the mallet lifted itself to her brow and a whimper was let loose from her lips. Hansa‘s gaze grew wide, and they stared into hers. “Can you envision her agony after each tap on her knees? Or mayhaps her elbows? Watching her limbs fold between the frames... can you? Can you?” She seethed against the muzzle. “Not playing along... heh... is not wise!“ his fingers slipped in her from down below, “You will perish here. You will be yet another corpse flung into the morgue. Mayhaps a man will rape your body while it’s still warm.“ he brought the hammer to her eye level. “This... will be the last thing you will see. Or my face if you’re lucky enough, heh. A wise woman knows what choice to make. Be a wise woman.” the mother muttered something through her rope gag, and Hansa lifted it off her head. “What was that?” She looked bewildered. “You’re... you’re just a child.” That struck him queer. "Me?" The prince said, "We're all children of something. I'm just a stillborn of guilt." - Hansa threatening Tabitha.